Childhood Bullies and Their Victims at Increased Risk for Psychotic Episodes Later in Life

A study published Tuesday in the journal Psychological Medicine contends that exposure to childhood bullying will lead to an increased risk of psychotic experiences in adulthood, regardless of the person being a victim or perpetrator of bullying.

Researchers from the University of Warwick and the University of Bristol studied a group of children in the UK from birth into adulthood in order to better understand the effects of childhood bullying on a person later in their life. The team found that even when controlling for external factors such as family issues or pre-existing behavior problems, both the victims of childhood bullying and the primary school bullies themselves had four and a half times greater odds of having suffered from a psychotic experience by the time they were 18 years old. This proved true even if a child was involved with bullying for only a short time, the researchers said.

The study participants took place in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), commonly known as the Children of the '90s study, which assessed the lives of a group of people born in southwest England.

The ALSPAC participants who reported bullying or being bullied in childhood also reported some form of psychotic experience later in life.

Psychotic experiences, the researchers said, can include anything from hearing voices that are not there to paranoia. If persistent, these experiences can lead to a high level of distress in daily life.

"We want to eradicate the myth that bullying at a young age could be viewed as a harmless rite of passage that everyone goes through - it casts a long shadow over a person's life and can have serious consequences for mental health," said Dieter Wolke of the University of Warwick. "These numbers show exactly how much childhood bullying can impact on psychosis in adult life. It strengthens on the evidence base that reducing bullying in childhood could substantially reduce mental health problems. The benefit to society would be huge, but of course, the greatest benefit would be to the individual."

Although bullying and its impact on its victims has been previously studied, this research is the first to report the long-term impact of being involved in bullying during school - either as a victim or perpetrator - and the occurrence of psychotic experiences later on in life.

"The results show that interventions against bullying should start early, in primary school, to prevent long term serious effects on children's mental health," Wolke said. "This clearly isn't something that can wait until secondary school to be resolved; the damage may already have been done."